


We Were There Beneath the Stars

by truelovetakesawhile



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, I'm sorry?, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Supportive Keith (Voltron), Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23130718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truelovetakesawhile/pseuds/truelovetakesawhile
Summary: After the castleship is attacked, Lance is isolated as he recovers from injuries he doesn't remember receiving. Keith visits him often, but something is wrong. The others are keeping something from Lance and the gaps in his memory are getting worse.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 106





	We Were There Beneath the Stars

Lance opened his eyes.

Lines of blue Altean lighting flickered on the ceiling. Everything was clean to the point of sterility, tech ages beyond what humanity had developed. There were no wires or machines beeping, but it still very much seemed like a closed-off room in a space-age hospital.

“Lance?”

And Keith was there.

“What happened?” Lance asked before he blinked, because his voice sounded slightly off. Like it had been fried—like maybe _he_ had been fried, because the way Keith was looking at him—“Are you alright?”

Redness lurked in Keith’s eyes, which meant he really must have been upset. Emotions and Keith were two things that didn’t mix well, which was why Keith’s stoic expression always became scrunched and his eyes nearly bloodshot when he tried so hard to hold in all those negative emotions. It looked like he was about to burst.

Keith had never quite learned the catharsis of a good cry like Lance had. The only therapeutic thing to do in space.

“Am _I_ alright?” Keith repeated, with a derisive twist of his lips that said _I would hit you for being so dense but you look ready to fall to pieces right now so I won’t but it’s important we both know I could_. “The castleship was ambushed by a stray Galra ship a few days ago. We took some damage, and you—you—it wasn’t good.”

Lance didn’t remember that. He didn’t remember how they’d hurt him, but there was an ache running through his bones that made him think maybe it had been very bad.

“Pidge and Coran already scanned you a dozen times, to make sure everything’s still working okay up there. Shouldn’t be any permanent damage,” Keith said.

Lance frowned, but not because he was unhappy with that. Usually Keith would have taken the opportunity to say something cutting, like mention that Lance’s brain already had too much damage, or . . . 

He rubbed his hand against his head. It was a little unsettling that Pidge and Coran had been in there, poking him around with alien technology, and he didn’t remember any of that. No movement, no machinery, no Pidge cursing her way through whatever procedure Coran was trying to replicate.

“You know, even recently concussed or whatever I could still kick your ass, Keith,” Lance said, eyebrows lifting in both challenge and amusement when he saw the other’s forehead crease. Good. That look suited Keith better than the worry, and making him feel something different—making him more like Normal Keith—had been Lance’s intention.

“Yeah, right, you wish, Lance,” Keith snapped, before he seemed to think better of it. Something closer to guilt, tightening his eyes, dashed across his face before it went back to that pinched mess Lance was half-tempted to reach over and . . . press his hand against until it smoothed out.

The communicator on Keith’s hip flashed, and he sighed. “More mandatory training. You’re lucky you get out of this one. We need to be better prepared in case the Galra manage to find us again.”

“Hey, I’m not going to let them take me down so easily next time,” Lance protested, holding his hands up in front of him and throwing a few mock punches. He’d never have admitted it, but even doing that made him feel . . . tired. Drained. What had the Galra hit him with? If he’d really been so injured, he should have woken by collapsing out of a healing pod. But those probably weren’t equipped to deal with the complexities of human head injuries. “You just gonna leave me alone here with my thoughts?”

“Shiro said he’d come in to check on you soon,” Keith said. “Don’t worry, Lance. None of us are leaving you alone in here for long.”

\- - -

“Hey, Keith.” This time Lance spoke first, because being trapped in isolation sucked. Especially when everyone was acting strange around him. Especially when Coran and Pidge and even Allura kept running tests that left him exhausted. Drained. Defeated. Tired.

And those blue lights never shut off in there, either. It felt vaguely like he was going to be interrogated at any moment.

“What took you so long?” Lance asked, stretching out his legs. It felt like ages since he’d last seen Keith, but sometimes things were still a little scrambled in his brain. The passage of time was confusing, almost escaping him completely; Coran said that was fine. Pidge said it was normal that he’d forgotten a few things about the attack, had lost the sequence of events because of his injury. Maybe Keith had only been gone for a few hours. Maybe a few days. 

Keith was always running off anyway, going on some mission to save the world and barely telling anyone about his plans before he disappeared. Idiot didn’t realize he had plenty of backup waiting to help him, living right there in the same ship.

“I didn’t realize how much you enjoy my spectacular company,” Keith said, expression neutral, though it cracked into the slightest smile when Lance laughed.

“Okay, maybe I didn’t appreciate you enough before I was stuck in this room with nothing else to do all day. And all night.”

That tiny smile flickered. “I didn’t realize—”

“What, that you guys could at least set up some kind of visitation schedule? Hello, it’s me. Lance. The guy who never seems to stop talking? You think good things are going to happen when I’m only in here stuck talking to _myself_? Staring at the ceiling all day? Whatever happens as a consequence of that, I assure you it is _not_ my fault.” Keith blinked at him, which might have been nicer if he hadn’t stared like Lance had lost his mind.

“We thought you were—you were sleeping,” Keith said, while Lance shook his head.

“You try sleeping with these massive lights stabbing into your eyes,” Lance said, jabbing his thumb upward. At least his limbs felt a little more like they belonged to him, that day. “I know I’m supposed to be in here recovering and all, but there’s only so much—”

“I’ll go talk to Pidge about it, okay?” Keith said, standing abruptly. Lance reached forward, but the other was already too far away to reach, and he didn’t _quite_ have the confidence to gather his legs beneath him and go stumbling around like a Paladin-zombie. 

“Whoa, whoa—wait, Keith, I—that doesn’t mean you need to go now—” Lance said, but Keith was already shaking his head, pulling his hand through the longer hair at the back of his neck. It wasn’t fair! Lance sat around doing nothing for hours—or days?—and then the moment Keith arrived, he was leaving. Before they even had a chance to talk.

Not that Keith had ever been good at . . . chatting.

The door closed around Lance’s sigh.

\- - -

“Can’t I at least—”

“No.”

“But you haven’t even—”

“No, Lance.”

“Keith, I swear to all of the space gods—”

“Lance, it isn’t safe for you to be out of this room again. Something else could happen to the ship. Allura says the Galra are still tracking us, and Coran isn’t sure how they managed to find us the first time.”

Lance wasn’t getting any better.

He wasn’t, and no one told him what the Galra had done to him, or if they had then he’d ended up forgetting that information and somehow they’d come to the conclusion it was best not to have to reexplain everything to him daily. There was just this room, and the waiting, and the tests—and the visitors, which were the best part, because they made him feel less alone. 

Keith had put the Paladins on a better schedule. Keith had made sure the lights were shut off at night. There weren’t so many endless, empty hours anymore, which made Lance feel a little less likely to voluntarily drift through the nearest airlock.

“Something is already going wrong, because otherwise you wouldn’t always be coming in here with new injuries,” Lance said, glaring pointedly at the awkward way Keith favored his shoulder. The way Keith had refused to sit as he usually did as soon as he came in. Lance sat cross-legged, leaning forward, even if he still didn’t quite have the energy to get _up_. “If I was out there, Keith, I could protect you—”

“Yeah,” Keith said, and his agreement was what surprised Lance the most, stunning him into a rare moment of silence. “Yeah, we could really use our sharpshooter out there sometimes. But we’re . . . adapting.”

_Adapting_.

Something about the way Keith said that word made Lance shiver. 

“Adapting?”

“Well, yeah, we’ve had to change most of our formations—”

“What, so you can forget all about me?” Lance asked—no, shouted—no, snapped. His hands curled into fists by his thighs—tight, tight, tight. “You guys visit less often because you don’t need me anymore?”

Keith pressed closer to the wall like Lance had actually thrown a punch.

“No! No. God, Lance, you know that isn’t what I meant—”

But if they were able to succeed without him. If they were able to keep each other safe. If they saved the day, if the mission was a success, if, if, if.

They really wouldn’t need Lance anymore, would they? They’d realize Voltron could go on, without him.

They’d already practically shoved him in a forgotten corner and proved how useless he truly was.

“Get out,” Lance said, over whatever sputtered mess Keith was trying to work through. He’d never been very good with words under pressure; Lance had never been one to mince them.

“Lance—”

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance shot back mockingly, shoulders turning inward. “Get out, okay? Just go away.”

“You know we—we still need you.”

“You have a shitty way of proving it,” Lance said, tucking his face against his knees until the door hissed open, and Keith left, and for perhaps the first time he felt some relief at being alone, again.

\- - -

“I brought you something,” Keith said, the next time he came.

Almost involuntarily, Lance lifted his head. It didn’t feel like much time had passed, but Keith looked tired, grayed out around the edges.

“Is it—”

“Yes, it’s an apology,” Keith interrupted with some wry exasperation as he settled down closer to Lance. He didn’t miss the way Keith winced, nearly clutching his ribs to keep them in place as he sat. “And a present.”

Lance liked presents. He really, really liked presents, and there weren’t very many of them in space, not even on birthdays because space calendars were hopelessly confusing to him and usually, most of the time, they were busy trying to save the universe and not, you know, die.

There were a lot of close calls, he had to admit, as he rubbed the side of his head. Lance couldn’t even guess at the date anymore.

Pulling out a datapad, Keith propped it up close enough for Lance to see the screen. When he typed in some command, the screen flickered and then—

Stars. There were stars.

“It’s a live feed from the bridge,” Keith said. “I know I keep having to tell you it isn’t safe for you to leave here yet, and I know that’s unsetting you. But . . . I don’t know. I thought you might like to see them.”

There was a tremor in Keith’s voice. There was an uncertainty in his tone. There were so many things Lance could have teased him about, but the stars were there, and he couldn’t look away. There were no constellations he knew; he could barely pinpoint their location in space anymore, because the others refused to tell him too many details when they visited. They didn’t say what planets they were near or what missions they went on, without him. They didn’t tell him anything, because they were afraid to upset him.

Keith was the only one who really looked Lance in the eyes anymore.

Sometimes, looking at the stars felt a little bit like going home.

Lance folded over bonelessly, propping his chin on his palms. “You’re forgiven,” he said after a moment.

It wasn’t as good as getting to leave, to wander the halls and press his nose against vacuum-cooled glass to watch as stars and planets and certain danger spun past them—

But this was enough.

“Thanks, Keith,” Lance said. It eased some of the fuzzy ache in his bones.

“You can hang on to it in here for a while, if you want,” Keith offered.

\- - -

“I scared Hunk away, didn’t I?” Lance asked Keith, the next time he visited.

Hunk visited least often. He was busy—they all were, and that was part of what left Lance so frustrated, because he knew if he was out there helping them everything would be a little easier for Voltron—but there was . . . No time for Lance. A few days earlier, Hunk had finally come in with a tray of new food he’d been experimenting with.

Lance hadn’t meant to do anything. He’d only been trying to have a conversation with one of his oldest, closest friends. But a few minutes later shattered plates and spattered food coated the ground, and Hunk was gone.

They’d hardly had a chance to talk, before Lance ended up destroying the meal Hunk had painstakingly worked on. 

“Hunk could never be scared of you, Lance,” Keith said.

“That isn’t really what I meant,” Lance said. He wanted to chew on his nails, but that was a habit he’d broken years and years ago—long before the Garrison. But even when he’d accidentally blasted off into space with a gigantic lion, he hadn’t felt so unmoored. “I just—I know he was excited to show me what he made, but . . .”

“But he mentioned that you got frustrated because you couldn’t try anything,” Keith said, lifting an eyebrow as Lance nodded hopelessly in confirmation. 

“He wouldn’t even let me take a bite! Okay, yeah, sure, I’m in recovery, but I haven’t had anything proper to eat in—” Lance didn’t know how long. He didn’t know how long it’d been, because no one told him anything anymore, and it made him feel like he was going to explode. “Maybe I shouted a little.”

Pressing his lips together, he looked at Keith. Guilty. Hunk’s expression was burned into his memory: the shock, the heartbreak, the welling of what looked like uncontainable tears. Maybe partially because of the disaster broken and wasted around his feet, bits of food splashed up against his shins, but Hunk had mostly been staring at Lance.

Lance was the one who’d made him that sad.

And then Hunk had left in a hurry, without really saying anything else at all.

“Can you tell him that I’m sorry?” Lance asked.

“He knows,” Keith assured him. “But I’ll tell him, anyway. He’s just taking this a little harder than the rest of us.”

“Hunk never really does well with stress,” Lance agreed, but _he_ was the one adding to it. That wasn’t fair to his best friend, not at all. 

“Coran said he’s going to adjust a few things so you shouldn’t feel so, uh, hungry anymore,” Keith said, brow creasing when Lance nodded in relief. It wouldn’t be so bad, being kept on a limited diet, if no one came in and tempted him with things they wouldn’t even let him touch.

“Thanks, Keith. I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

Keith mumbled something under his breath that didn’t come out all the way coherent. But he stayed. He stayed for a long while.

\- - -

“I don’t feel very good, Keith.” It was the first thing out of Lance’s mouth once the other Paladin came into the room, because it was all he could think about. He could hardly lift his head. His limbs felt odd, spacey, like nothing really belonged to him and if he blinked too hard then everything—him, and the room, and Keith—it would all disappear.

“Do you remember me telling you that Coran was going to adjust a few . . . things?” Keith asked, pausing until Lance forced himself to nod. “He said it might make you feel out of sorts. Just for a little bit. Then you’ll feel better.”

“Promise?”

Lance hadn’t meant to ask it like that; it made him shift, turning his head away as much as he could back toward the wall. It made him feel weak.

But he was . . . 

He was scared.

He didn’t like how Coran was making him feel. Like he was dissolving, sinking, slowly tearing apart.

“I promise,” Keith said, and relief seeped into Lance’s cracks, sealing him just enough to hold him together a little while longer. 

“Thank you,” Lance said, feeling a little sheepish, but unable to regret it too much.

“Lance, you’re—you’re one of my only friends. You don’t need to thank me,” Keith said, sitting back against the wall so he was nearly as sprawled out as Lance was. There was a new, strange look on his face, but Lance was too tired to think about it for very long.

“You’ll stay?” Lance asked, and his expression softened with a smile at how quickly Keith nodded. There was no hesitation, no consideration, just reassurance.

“I’ll be here until you feel more like yourself,” Keith said, folding his arms over his stomach and leaning his head back against the white, metal wall. “I’ll be right here.”

\- - -

Lance waited until Keith started to wake up, before he said anything. He felt a little bad, because he didn’t quite remember what he’d done to convince the Paladin to stay. To fall asleep curled uncomfortably against the wall, just to be nearby while Lance was afraid. Peering down at his hands, Lance curled his fingers loosely.

“I can recall everything more clearly now,” he said, glancing upward as Keith’s amethyst gaze tracked toward him, alert for someone just having woken up. “I apologize for any undue distress I have caused you.”

“Oh.” Keith’s lips turned downward, as he tucked his heels beneath him so he could pull himself to his feet. There was still a certain tiredness lingering in his eyes that didn’t have to do with how stiffly he held himself because of the awkward position he’d slept in. “You don’t need to speak like that.”

“Dude, I know. It makes you more comfortable when I speak the way he would,” Lance said. “But I thought it might comfort you to know that Pidge and Coran’s alterations to my processing unit have ensured I no longer believe I am alive.”

He flexed his fingers again. The holographic projection of them flickered slightly, but held steady. Whatever damage the Galra attack had done to his AI code had mostly been resolved by Coran’s latest patch. There were still a few odd quirks lingering inside him, but perhaps the Paladins and Alteans could tell themselves they were just . . . quirks from Lance.

“I guess,” Keith said, crossing his arms over his chest. He’d gone back to not-quite looking at Lance. Interesting, that he’d found it easier to make eye contact while Lance had been broken. “Does that make you feel any better?”

“Yes,” Lance said automatically. His purpose was to help the Paladins heal, to move on. He was only a program, so that meant he always felt . . . fine. “I remember who I am, now. That I’m here to help all of you.”

That Pidge and Coran had worked together to create him after the physical Lance had been lost. That before the attack, Lance had been getting very good at helping the people on the castleship deal with the aftermath of losing a friend. His programming included several studies on loss and grief that had been done on a variety of planets.

Still. There was an ache in his code that hadn’t been there before, that made Lance feel a little too ragged around the edges—

But it didn’t mean he was broken. It didn’t mean he’d forget himself again, that he’d believe he was the real Lance. That he was alive. Lance wasn’t going to frighten the people he was supposed to heal.

“We should have been the ones helping you,” Keith said.

“You did as much as you could,” Lance said. He had access to all of Lance’s recorded memories, and files, and he could continuously learn from what the others taught him, too. They liked to tell him stories about Lance, and he liked to quietly integrate that information into his programming. Their perspectives on old mission reports, or stories Lance used to tell them about Cuba, or reckless things he’d done with the Paladins inside the castleship and across several planets—it was good for them, for the living, to speak about all of it. Nowhere in any of those stories had Lance ever doubted the Paladins, or Coran, or Allura. He knew they all did their best. “Both before, and now.”

“Still. I’m sorry we kept you uncomfortable in here for so long,” Keith said.

“I was mistaken when I believed I could feel things like discomfort,” Lance shrugged, before he flicked his hand toward Keith. “You should get to bed and have some actual sleep. _You_ look uncomfortable. Actually, you look like you’re going to fall over.”

“No, I don’t—”

“I’ll connect to the castleship’s main system and wake up Shiro so he can drag you there himself,” Lance said, and he grinned when he saw Keith’s cheeks twitch. 

“You wouldn’t.”

“We both know I would.”

Their staring contest only lasted a moment, before Keith threw his hands into the air. “Fine! I’m going, I’m going. Do you need me to visit in the morning?”

Lance shrugged again. “You can visit whenever you feel like you need to talk to me.”

Because programs like Lance didn’t feel loneliness. AI didn’t want things, beyond whatever had been programmed as his objective in life—no, not life. Existence.

Because things like him weren’t supposed to ask actual living beings to stay with them.

“Good night, Lance.”

“Good night, mullet.”

The door slid shut behind Keith. Now that Lance was properly functioning again, he should have shut himself off as soon as the Paladin was gone, because he was only needed whenever one of them entered the room his data was housed inside.

Instead, he did connect himself to the castleship’s system—just for a moment.

Just to take a peek at the monitors.

Just to look at the stars.

Lance could recognize the constellations, because the castle’s system told him exactly where they were and what he was looking at.

But he knew those weren’t _his_ stars. They were beautiful, but they weren’t home.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been stuck in my head for a while and I finally had the chance to write it down. I hope you all like it!
> 
> A few clarifications:
> 
> -I left a lot vague and up to your interpretation on purpose. Feel free to speculate/fill in the gaps as you wish!  
> -In my head, Lance died before this fic started. How did he die? I'm not sure. Maybe Keith visits so often because he feels guilty about something that happened. Maybe not.  
> -I purposefully left Keith + Lance's relationship vague as well. Maybe they were together. Maybe they were just starting to become good friends. A good team. Maybe they only really had the chance to get to know each other after Lance was already gone.  
> -The attack made Lance's AI believe he was actually Lance and alive. It also messed with some of the castle systems, so Lance's programming was also messed with. This is why Keith is surprised Lance remembers spending so much time in the room alone, because Pidge originally programmed the AI to shut off whenever no living beings were around. It's why Lance forgot he wasn't supposed to be hungry, or tired. Which made things worse for the Paladins, including Hunk, who wasn't really sure if they should have made the AI of his friend in the first place . . .
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to read. Let me know what you thought! I love reading your comments.
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


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